Forces opposed to the United States managed to strike in St. Paul last week. No one was hurt, and economic damage was minimal. But the incident offers a lesson: Our nation’s economy may be hurt by attacks from enemies and by unreasonable fear of such attacks. We need good judgement to minimize damage to our economy and way of life.
The “strike” I refer to was the dumping of an unidentified white powder in two buildings at the College of St. Catherine, where I teach. It was most likely a juvenile prank. There is no evidence it was carried out by any terrorist organization.
No one has gotten ill. Several hundred students did miss a class or two. A few dozen other faculty members and I had to leave our offices temporarily. No property was destroyed. Forty or more fire and police workers were tied up at the scene for a few hours. This is not huge damage.
But Monday’s incident at St. Catherine would not have happened if some real enemy of the United States had not crashed three planes into buildings a month ago and if some real enemy were not mailing actual anthrax spores to real U.S. citizens elsewhere.
The damage at St. Kate’s was minor, but it is instructive how a few moments’ effort by one person closed down an economically useful activity for hours. Our nation is vulnerable to attack, and our enemy has a huge advantage in what military thinkers call “economy of force.” That phrase refers to using a small force to tie up or defeat a much more powerful opposing group.
A few individuals mailing letters and packages to well-selected individuals can trigger a hugely disproportionate disruption of output. It isn’t even necessary for them to put poison, explosives or microbes into every letter, just into enough so that the danger remains credible. Copycats, whether mentally disturbed or merely stupid, amplify the threat.
Police forces may catch those who mailed actual anthrax from Florida and New Jersey, but that is no guarantee that other agents will not continue the campaign.
We can err in two directions. First, we can be so lax about security that saboteurs manage to kill U.S. citizens and destroy our infrastructure. Second, we can be so security-conscious that we tie ourselves up in knots. We can devote so many resources to security that we lower our level of investment in productive public and private capital and thus reduce our standard of living over the long run.
No one can tell which is the greater danger right now. I tend to think it is the second. But the public mood is such that had I been in charge of the incident response on Monday, I don’t think I would have done anything differently.
Eventually, as a society, we will adjust and strike some balance between safety and paralysis. Other societies have faced similar problems before us. Germany, Spain, Italy and the U.K. have all faced campaigns of bombings and assassinations in recent decades.
Other peoples live with the aftermath of war. In a little gem of a book entitled “Aftermath,” published in 1996, Donovan Webster describes how life goes on in regions of France and Belgium that were littered with unexploded high-explosive and poison gas shells from World Wars I and II. People in this region, mostly farmers, are still killed each year by ordnance made nearly a century ago. There were 31 such deaths in 1991 alone. But everyday life goes on.
If someone found a mustard gas shell today in their garden here, hundreds of public safety workers would respond, square miles would be evacuated and it would make headlines across the country.
In northern France, however, the locals would simply call a telephone number and a démineur or “deminer” wearing an ordinary uniform would drive over to dig up the shell and haul it away in an open trailer behind a Land Rover.
Since 1946, more than 600 such démineurs have died clearing millions of shells, grenades, mines and bombs. And much larger numbers of French civilians have died in explosions. But tourists do not avoid visiting northern France, and farming, commerce and light industry thrive in that much fought-over region.
Our lives were altered on September 11 and may never be quite the same again. We must learn to go about our daily work and family and social activities in the face of greater risk than we knew before. The U.S. economy will be altered in that we will devote more of our resources to security measures than before.
Minnesotans and others will have to strike a balance between safety and other vital considerations.
© 2001 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.